Poem by Richard Chenevix Trench

To a Friend Entering the Ministry

 I.

High thoughts at first, and visions high
Are ours of easy victory;
The word we bear seems so divine,
So framed for Adam’s guilty line,
  That none, unto ourselves we say,
Of all his sinning suffering race,
Will hear that word, so full of grace,
  And coldly turn away.

 II.

But soon a sadder mood comes round--
High hopes have fallen to the ground,
And the ambassadors of peace
Go weeping, that men will not cease
  To strive with heaven--they weep and mourn,
That suffering men will not be blest,
That weary men refuse to rest,
  And wanderers to return.

 III.

Well is it, if has not ensued
Another and a worser mood,
When all unfaithful thoughts have way,
When we hang down our hands, and say,
  Alas! it is a weary pain,
To seek with toil and fruitless strife
To chafe the numbed limbs into life,
  That will not live again.

 IV.

Then if Spring odours on the wind
Float by, they bring into our mind
That it were wiser done, to give
Our hearts to Nature, and to live
  For her--or in the student’s bower
To search into her hidden things,
And seek in books the wondrous springs
  Of knowledge and of power.

 V.

Or if we dare not thus draw back,
Yet oh! to shun the crowded track
And the rude throng of men! to dwell
In hermitage or lonely cell,
  Feeding all longings that aspire
Like incense heavenward, and with care
And lonely vigil nursing there
  Faith’s solitary pyre.

 VI.

Oh! let not us this thought allow--
The heat, the dust upon our brow,
Signs of the contest, we may wear:
Yet thus we shall appear more fair
  In our Almighty Master’s eye,
Than if in fear to lose the bloom,
Or ruffle the soul’s lightest plume,
  We from the strife should fly.

 VII.

And for the rest, in weariness,
In disappointment, or distress,
When strength decays, or hope grows dim,
We ever may recur to Him,
  Who has the golden oil divine,
Wherewith to feed our failing urns,
Who watches every lamp that burns
  Before his sacred shrine.

1. To the Same (Songs of deliverance compassed thee about)
2. Sonnet to Silvio Pellico, on Reading the Account of His Imprisonment
3. Lines
4. Sonnet (What good soever in thy heart or mind)
5. Sonnet (You say we love not freedom, honoured friend)

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